Giro d’Italia Stage 2: Petacchi takes the win by a tire spoke

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for US Pro Cycling News. I am sharing recap writing duties with the other writers of both the Giro and the Tour of California.

Today’s Giro stage was the longest of the race, at 244km. Sebestian Lang (Omega Pharma Lotto) escaped after 6km and thus started a solo breakaway which lasted almost the entire race. Lang probably expected someone to go with in the break, but it didn’t happen, and he was on his own. Even though he had 20 minutes at one point, it was a doomed escape, as the peloton would work hard to bring him back and ensure a bunch sprint.

Everyone worked for their sprinter today, even Marco Pinotti (HTC-Highroad), the pink jersey wearer, was working for his sprinter, Mark Cavendish. As a flat stage it was a relatively calm one, but at about 35km to go, the field started jockeying for position and working to bring Lang back. Lang was rewarded for his time out front along by taking the Mountain Classification jersey.

The second Lang was swallowed up, with 24km left, Leonardo Giordiani (Farnese Vini-Neri Sottoli) launched a counter attack, followed quickly by Jan Bakelants (Omega Pharma-Lotto) and Michal Golas (Vaconsoleil-DCM). Soon, a group of eight had amassed at the front: Ivan Rovny (Radioshack), Ruggero Marzoli (Astana), Eduard Vorganov (Katusha), Jérôme Pineau (QuickStep), and Daniele Righi (Lampre-ISD). However threatening this group was, it was not to be, as it was caught within the last 10km.

With 1.5km left, Garmin-Cévelo, Lampre, and HTC were all leading the peloton, working to get their sprinters (Tyler Farrar, Alessandro Petacchi, and Mark Cavendish, respectively). Coming into the final 100m, Farrar’s Garmin-Cérvelo had the perfect position, but Farrar was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Petacchi and Cavendish duked it out, with Petacchi edging out Cavendish by a few scant millimeters. Cavendish was clearly unhappy with how Petacchi ran his sprint, as his prolific hand gestures indicated. Afterwards, Cavendish charged Petacchi with with changing his line 3 times, causing Cavendish to have to slow down to avoid running into him. However, despite Cavendish’s displeasure, Petacchi gets the stage win.

In the end, Cav may have lost the stage win, but he gets the pink jersey, as his finish ahead of Pinotti put him in the lead.

I hate to say it, but Garmin-Cérvelo were the real losers of the day- despite having a mess of riders up front in the closing meters of the stage today, they were unable to get Farrar to the line.

Tomorrow will be a tricky day for sprinters team. A Cat 3 climb 40km from the finish could allow a well timed breakaway to succeed. However, the sprinters teams will be watching attacks very closely, as they will want the stage to end in a bunch sprint- especially Cavendish and HTC, as he was denied today. Check out the profiles here.